


Thousand Year Revolution

by Go1dwords



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fantasy Religion, Gods & Goddesses, I hold this dear to my heart, Loneliness, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Self-Indulgent, We’re attempting another long haul here, Wreathe my boi, You make me go brrrrr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26708638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go1dwords/pseuds/Go1dwords
Summary: The world of Medegyan holds no certainties unless you are immortal.Favors come and go, rulers rise and fall, souls die and rebirth. Makes sense that the gods would take care of all of that. Middle management must be a nightmare, though.Cheers, lad, for making it to the thousandth-year anniversary of this generation of deities. May their children fuel the ever-expanding planes of Espertine, Palette, and Isotan.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character





	1. Wreathe's Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Medegyan, my latest pet project — this is number, er, like twenty, but that’s beside the point.
> 
> As usual, here’s the context:
> 
> I love fantasy worlds run by deities and higher powers, and I especially love the ones run by deities and higher powers who are just as vindictive, idiotic, and petty as the mortals that they rule over. It makes for a good story and interesting relationships between the beings that inhabit the place.
> 
> It interests me the way certain characters tick. What are they willing to sacrifice? What morals are they willing to break? This story really isn’t all that mapped out yet, but these ideas provide a general idea of what I hope to achieve here.
> 
> I’m just a sucker for a little defiance mixed in with a dash of adventure and romance, I suppose. Never hurts to indulge yourself, haha.
> 
> Not sure how well I will be able to incorporate world-building in-story, but I’ll try my best. Hopefully it will make sense.
> 
> Kudos to my sibling, who also has contributed to this story by adding in certain plot points and character development on my planning document!

By the time that Wreathe receives the news, she is already gone.

He feels nothing, at first: an error in mindset on his part. He often forgets that he is one of the only gods given free passage in and out of the Subterranean Isotan. Most of his family and friends (and enemies) stay trapped within its walls, though much of them deny that they are kept against their will and insist that they can leave whenever they so desire.

It is not something that he has time to consider, many days — there is always something else to worry about, an endless tug in his gut of all the souls still lost within the Palette, some wailing for his guidance and others pleading for the protection of their bared souls against the harsh elements of the Overworld by a quick and painless slash of his scythe. He forgets that leaving and returning Isotan is not as unremarkable as it seems to his own person — it is a place meant to keep in the ones who had lived scorning the gods’ goodwill, then died with a debt to pay back as a result of that scorn.

His mother, the Lady Sparta, has to be the one to remind him of this.

And thus, comes a flurry of more foreign emotions to the ever-stoic usherer of the fallen. Wreathe recognizes confusion, then dawning realization, then something bitter, before falling back into nothingness.

Confusion for the  _ what?  _ and the  _ how? _ Then, realization for the  _ why? _ The bitterness is something that is barely there, something that doesn’t have meaning, then has even less meaning when it disappears. Similar to all things that do not pertain to his work, he does not think on it any longer than the time the feeling takes to come and go.

Mother gives him a look, like she can read his mind and is disappointed in him.

The ever-silent Estate of Lord Xynon, his father, is wrought with the sounds of thousands of shades whispering their rumors of the once-shunned demigoddess, whose lack of immortality made her the oddity of House Isotan even before her apparently-recent departure.

She was often the word in the mouths of the newly-dead, especially outside the threshold of his Lord and Master’s house; and, despite no shade having enough foolishness to say it where she can hear, Wreathe is almost certainly sure that she knew of her peculiar standing here in the House regardless.

He can envision how she had planned for her disappearance: her impatient but silent cleaning-up of her few keepsakes and possessions, the shadows of the Isotan Deep Down draping over her shoulders and head like a lavish cloak, the eternally blood-stained spear strapped to her back and smoldering where it touches the darkness dripping off of her, fire-red eyes tinged with the poison of Isotan’s murk.

Lord Raffaele seems unruffled, but Wreathe catches the stiffness in the Lord’s jaw, the way he glowers at the shades whispering in the corner, the furrow in his brow. He is not pleased with the decisions of his daughter, it seems, though perhaps he knows that it would have been futile to try and stop her.

_ She will be back _ , Lord Xynon tells Lord Raffaele, irritation in his voice at the other god’s methodical tapping on his desk. The aggravation could almost be mistaken for boredom.  _ She will be back, unless she wants to bask in the filth of mortals for the rest of her life. _

Raffaele laughs, his smile sharp and biting,  _ I know, I know. But you forget that she was content to bask in the filth of the Deep Down rather than stay within the House in order to escape our attention. Surely you know that she will gladly become fully mortal as long as she can hide forever? _

Lord Xynon’s pen stops scritching for only a moment before resuming. Then, roughly,  _ then may she rejoin us in her death. _

When there is a lack of response, Lord Xynon looks up at the God of Entertainment, who is usually quick to laugh and retort with something witty or silly. Raffaele’s back is turned, so Wreathe cannot see his face, but Lord Xynon seems to find something there, because his eyes briefly soften. He puts his pen down and pushes the paperwork away and murmurs,  _ Perhaps the renovations can wait. Come with me, my friend. Such matters are not to be discussed in front of all the House _ .

Wreathe watches Lord Xynon and Lord Raffaele disappear, the air and energy of Isotan condensing before flashing a cold purple that vanishes along with them. Mother shakes her head and goes to take up the work that father had left unfinished on his desk. The shades’ whispers grow louder, disconcerting in the large hall, where the sounds echo and amplify tenfold.

Did she think of what her absence would cause, when she left?  _ Not likely _ , Wreathe thinks. Her stubborn nature caused her to have a lack of foresight at the best of times and a tendency to ignore her problems at the worst. He would not be surprised that if he got the chance to ask her — wherever she may be — she would admit sheepishly that she had not thought about the consequences.

It’s another awful tendency of hers: being too stubborn, too self-sacrificing, and too honest, especially at the worst of times. She knows not of the careful platitudes and foundations that other deities lay like a spinner’s web around themselves. She has never been anything but openly blunt to all the frequenters of the House.

Tsch. He has no such use for such idle thoughts. She should not have mattered, anyhow, and he is resigned to the knowledge — and perhaps a little regretful of the fact — that he has allowed his indulgence in her to go on for too long and has thus taken away from the quality of his own work.

On a similar note, the thought of meeting her somewhere amongst the mortals, while pleasant, is wholly fantastical and not at all realistic. She has turned her back on House Isotan; and though Lord Xynon and Lord Raffaele may be able to halt the other gods’ advances for now, it won’t be long before their prides won’t allow this casual defiance and scorn of the Subterranean divinity. Vengeance will be sought, eventually, and Wreathe is no stranger to the whims of the gods and goddesses of the Deep Down, having been the one contracted to exact the wrath of Isotan upon previous defectors.

She and Wreathe had been friendly, sure, but both of them had known duty well — or so he thought, before she had run — and if they do meet again, no doubt it will be because someone has sent him after her. It would be in both their best interests to avoid each others’ paths, if only to spare one or the other a return to the House the painful way. If nothing else, he will have more time to attend to his duties, despite him not particularly feeling any sort of satisfaction at the thought.

_ Murk and Curses…! _ He has become too sentimental for a dealer of death. It is affecting his job. Lord Xynon had not commented on the lapse in his work, but Wreathe knows that even without the ongoing feud between Espertine and Isotan mortals up above, the amount of unguided, uncollected dead souls outside of the Subterranean is piling up to become more and more evident each day. Lord Xynon does not prefer to call Wreathe’s brothers, and privately, Wreath agrees that it’s best to let sleeping demons lay; however, considering the state of the feud and the state of his own stretched-thin abilities and services….still, he would rather not have a sibling meet-up after nearly half a century of radio silence.

_ And yet  _ — and yet Wreathe knows that he will not be able to stop himself from talking to her if they do happen to meet again, that his attempts to avoid crossing paths will be half-hearted, that the thought of coincidentally seeing her and asking how she is faring in the mortality of Palette will be too hard to resist.

The warmth of the concept stays in his core, upon his face, and in his ears long after he banishes the thought from his mind.

A little grimly, and with something a little resentful and petty, Wreathe thinks that perhaps he ought to wait for mortality to take her first, so that when they inevitably meet again, it will be as father said to Lord Raffaele:  _ May she join us in death _ .

If they are meant to meet again — which they will, since she had not so much as given him a  _ goodbye _ — then Wreathe thinks that he deserves to be a little vindictive in determining the circumstances of their reunion.

And though they shouldn’t, these pointless considerations settle something in him that is always restless and aggravated where she is concerned.

He will work on it. A century or two ought to level him out yet.


	2. Scrambled or Sunny-Side up?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No turning back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It begins...

Escape, apparently, is egg-shaped.

I held it in my hands. It was red and purple and swirls with darkness, like the shadows of the dark celestial plain had condensed and formed a galaxy inside the shell. The entire thing was the size of my head and embedded with heavy-looking jewels and metals, but was somehow lighter than anything that I’d ever held.

So not really one of those _real_ eggs, like the ones that mortals eat in all sorts of manners, but close enough.

I felt a bit ridiculous, running down the mostly-empty hallways of outer Isotan cradling an egg to my chest as if it was going to float away; but, _erm_ , some things tend to not matter when I’m fleeing from 3rd-world monsters that have fangs long enough to send a demigoddess like me into the embrace of the Murk.

 _Why did those things have to find me today, of all days?_ I am clutching my prize so hard that I am losing feeling in my fingers. _Murk and curses, couldn’t they have chosen a day where I was not trying to leave the realm?_

Isotan — the territory that the 5th generation gods had claimed of the Dark Celestial Plane, really — had been my birthplace. It, along with Espertine (also 5th generation territory, except it was of the Light Celestial Plane instead), was the place where most gods and demigods of Medegyan stayed, for all of eternity. I am leaving. Once and for all.

Let me explain.

Medegyan was a world of three, ever-expanding planes. The size corresponded to the number of generations that had been created since the dawn of time. I knew that the part of Medegyan that I was familiar with is the fifth generation of gods, or the fifth era of mortality. Most generations do not interfere with another, unless the world was at stake (and that had only happened once, according to the records that Lord Xynon keeps within the Chamber of Management).

History of immortal ancestry is a rather dull subject, I admit, but it had been how I passed my days within the House. The 5th generation was growing to be larger, and many of the younger gods were starting to posture and quarrel over who would be the start of the next generation. It was stifling, and not of interest to me.

Lord Xynon had not yet even breached the subject, and yet there was already in-fighting going on for the _privilege_ of it all.

Why am I not fighting for this? Well...

 _Demi_ goddess, everyone. I am half-mortal. Apparently I don’t have the right to start a generation. You’d think some of the gods don’t even think I have rights at all from the way they sneer at me. If I tried to fight them, I’d get a one-way ticket straight into the heart of the Deep Down, where all the dead shades go.

Most demigods can cultivate immortality easily enough. Shave away the soul by using whatever godly powers your one immortal parent granted you, and woohoo, you’re immortal. Too bad that I’ve spent most of my free time hiding out in the Deep Down, accumulating whatever filth of the Material Plane — the Palette — that the dead bring down with them.

I figured since I was already well on my way to becoming fully mortal, and most of the gods don’t even see me as someone worthy of their time, I might as well bask in the filth of somewhere I might get an iota of peace.

Hence, I am _leaving_.

The plan was a lot less complicated than my reasons, at the very least. Out of the few gods that I tolerated, Emaddin was the one that I went to. He’s the Keeper of the Fountain Room of the Deep Down. The Boatman of Cursed Objects. Mister _Jinxed Hands_.

He took whatever contraband the dead brought down and put it into his own collection. He called himself a connoisseur; I called him a hoarder. He was the one that gave me the rebirth egg, claiming that it will be a one-way trip to the Palette. Supposedly some mortal on his second death had smuggled out an egg in their first rebirth, and had planned to use it immediately when he arrived back in the Deep Down, except that Emaddin had confiscated it after feeling “something too-magical about the new batch of shades that dropped in.”

I traded him for it, with the House Isotan contraband item: Lifeblood from the River Tenebris. It’s contraband, but most gods keep a stash hidden somewhere — drink from it once, and your soul is wiped clean; drink from it twice, and your soul will shave down to the size of a pebble. Gods that have attained immortality do not have souls, so Lifeblood serves as the immortal equivalent of a strong drink, I suppose.

Emaddin seemed ecstatic to get his hands on the Lifeblood. I didn’t want to tell him that I technically stole it from Xolodon. He would put it to better use than the demigod of betrayals anyway.

Sneaking out to a place where I could use the egg was a little trickier. The Deep Down is full of shades — I did not want to undo all of Wreathe’s hard work and accidentally ferry some poor souls _back_ the way they came. The House is full of gods — the bullies and the main branch, and no doubt they would prevent me from leaving. And the Earnnest was too — too sentimental.

And so that really left me with one place: Anchorage.

Honestly, the Endless Fields probably was one of my less thought-out decisions, but hey, we all work with what we get. It wasn’t my fault that the place is infested with monsters.

I turned my head. The Amber Hounds continued to nip at my heels. I turned back and ran faster.

 _Shades_ , I thought, heart pounding, _What do I do?_

I clutched the egg tighter. I can’t open it until I’m sure I will be the only person affected by it. I might accidentally bring the hounds with me into the Palette, and then unleash an apocalypse onto the mortals.

But then again... _I_ will be dead if the hounds catch up to me, which will be any minute now. Maybe I should just open it and see if I can deal with the Hounds in the Palette? _Murk and curses._

There are sounds of growling behind me, way too close for comfort. Cold, icy fear shot through me. Okay, yep, opening egg now.

My fingers scraped against the jewel-laden shell. They caught on the carefully-made grooves within the top of the structure. A heat spread over my knuckles, like some unknown entity was cradling my hands. _Twist me_ , the egg urged.

I twisted the top sideways.

There was a click.

There was a moment where I saw the egg split open like a cut onion, before golden light engulfed everything in a burning intensity. The hounds behind me yipped in alarm. I felt like I was being stretched and folded and twisted like a piece of dough. All at once, I was being suffocated, drowned, and burned to death.

Then the light opened up to an infinite blueness.

“AAHhghj-” I choked down the strangled yelp that tore its way out of my throat. I dropped the egg, and it fell to the ground with a _clank_. My muscles spasmed, and I felt scraped raw. Despite all my body’s complaints though, I blearily looked around.

Blue sky. Sun. Trees. _Woah_.

Giddiness rose up to replace the fear, and I cheered through my double-vision. _I made it! And the hounds aren’t here!_

Then everything exploded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first-person perspective is interesting, to say the least.

**Author's Note:**

> This story has hurt me. Every. Single. Word. For some reason, it hits closer to home than some other things I’ve written...


End file.
